Group items tagged

The 2013 results represent more than 400,000 surveys from 9,000 schools and 2,700 districts across the country. Respondents included 325,279 students, 32,151 teachers and librarians, 39,986 parents, 4,530 district administrators and, new to this year’s survey, 1,346 community members.

89 percent of high schools students have access to Internet-connected smart phones, while 50 percent of students in grades 3 through 5 have access to the same type of devices

students are designing “best-fit” solutions for their very specific needs.

Too much volume leads to testing fatigue for both students and teachers and can inadvertently cause the quality of the testing to suffer

. Variety This factor has perhaps the largest impact on student success in summative assessment.

Moving from a traditional classroom to a 1:1 classroom takes time and patience. All major stakeholders need time to adjust to having technology and information at their fingertips. Very few things bring instant and sustainable success. The most successful things in life take a lot of time and patience.

A major shift in the force of education has emerged as teachers have become self-directed, independent designers of their own learning.

My professional development occurs every day,

"When you talk about the choice between Android and iOS, that's a big decision. But the bigger decision is, 'Are we going to change our whole attitude to how we're delivering the lessons to the students?'"

"If you have a really slow wireless connection, and you're going to have to solely rely on apps, the amount of educational apps available for the iPad far outnumber what's available for Android and the quality of them," Starr said. But if you have a fast connection and want to use online content at no cost, remember that the majority of that content is based on Flash

We’re going from districts fearing it and blocking it off to welcoming it and making it a major part of their technology plan. We’ll be surprised if a significant portion of districts aren’t using mobile learning inside and outside of schools soon.”

Each educator, each class, each school will have to find the best way to integrate mobile devices based on its student population. The opportunity of using mobile devices and all of its utilities allows educators to reconsider: What do we want students to know, and how do we help them? And what additional benefit does using a mobile device bring to the equation? This gets to the heart of the mobile learning issue: beyond fact-finding and game-playing – even if it’s educational — how can mobile devices add relevance and value to how kids learn?

personalized learning – students owning what they learn.

The enhanced version of Khan Academy includes time-syncing between devices--no Internet connection required--an interactive transcript of the lectures for easy searching, and a handy scrubber for moving between parts of the lectures.

The major benefit of the app is offline learning

Major textbook publishers have been making electronic versions of their products for years, but until recently, there hasn't been any hardware suitable to display them.

Apple also released iBooks Author, a new tool meant to lure publishers into creating new content specifically for the iPad education user.

even if an iPad were to last for five years in the hands of students, the e-books plus the iPad would cost more than the hardback textbooks.

for the most part, schools have incorporated these 21st century instructional techniques and tools as add-ons to the teacher-centric 19th century classroom structure, in which the majority of the curriculum is pulled from a textbook, and, despite best intentions, most students learn the same thing in the same way at the same time.

what exactly is personalized learning? And why is technology so central to its outcomes?

personalized learning as an instructional approach that encompasses both differentiation and individualization, but is also flexible in content or theme to match the specific interests and prior experiences of learners

Many of the arguments being made today as to how the Internet is ruining our society were first put forth with the introduction of public speaking, the printed word, telecommunications and so on.

should respond to emails at 6 a.m. on a Saturday (emergency or not), this is less about your boss's disposition and more about a common lack of education as to how to best use technology.

It's my job to best manage my technology (and not the other way around).

At the end of the day, the iPad offers a remarkable level of efficiency and integration for businesspeople who are particularly sensitive to workflow challenges or spend most of their time on the go. Heavy duty programs and major memory hogs have no place on a tablet, and you’re simply not going to find those on the iPad anytime soon.